Friday, 10 May 2019

fixing license plate LED lights

Recently I found and buy these LED modules from china for my audi a4 b5 from 1999

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32818600811.html

I called this article "fixing" but in reality I only run these modules for 2months in winter so I can not say anything without datasheet for leds or real life experience. I change current via leds to 1/5 this means I will never be able say if they will fail with factory setup or not.

I have to created schematics from boards and investigate which resistor(s) need to be changed. Leds are driven in constant current mode using 2 NPN transistors constant current source.

Schematics

Back of module

Front of module

Front of PCB

Highlight of traces on PCB

Original sense resistors has value of 2R4 and 1R6 in series so 4Ohm ,
transistor base voltage is 0.6V so this means LEDs are driven at 150mA. led matrix is 6sets of 3series leds , which makes each led driven at
25mA(150mA/6). I chaged sense resistor to 2 x 10Ohm (20Ohm total) which run
them all at 30mA ((0.6V/20Ohm)/6 = 5mA each Led colomn).

R1+R3 change to 2x10Ohm resistors, change current to 30mA (6x5mA).

here are pictures of measuring current on bench, 2 unmodified modules

unmodified module

unmodified module

and here are 2 modified modules 1/5th of current:

1st modified module

2nd modified module

here is light output, still mostly lightning up ground :/

unmodified modules, current 150mA

modified modules, current 30mA

EDIT:

some more measurements:

original module with 4Ohm "resistor" run a 150mA and give about 8000 to 9000Lux

after modification with two 10Ohm resisots module run at 32mA and output is about 1000Lux